![]() ![]() The heroes in Gibbon’s history are the few brave and compassionate souls who fought against the relentless tide of circumstances, only (at best) to slow the inevitable ruin of the empire. ![]() Gibbon so often saw the worst in humankind: war, rebellion, deceit, mutiny, betrayal, mania, persecution, dogma, and any other crime you care to name. Edward Gibbon, never the optimist, in his long chronicle of the collapse of the Roman Empire defined history as “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” Will Durant thinks this is a terrible mistake, and his series on the Story of Civilization can in part be seen as a corrective to the Gibbonian view. ![]()
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